


Black and White and Rainbows

by mercurymotel



Series: Love is Never Really Fair [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soul Bond, Soulmates, cuz idk if this qualifies as "major character death", dear god i did not mean for this to happen, haikyuu!! - Freeform, i wasn't sure what archive warnings to use, idk how we got here but here we are, it's also not gonna be a happy fic i'm gonna warn you RIGHT NOW, someone does die but i'm not gonna tell you who, there is a character death so don't say i didn't warn you, these boys are super precious and i almost cried thinking about it, they are soulmates but i never said what kind :), yeah it's implied but you gotta figure out where, you don't know where this is going but don't worry neither do i
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:02:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24778087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurymotel/pseuds/mercurymotel
Summary: The one where Tsukishima falls in love. But not for long.
Relationships: Tsukishima Kei & Yamaguchi Tadashi, Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Series: Love is Never Really Fair [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792087
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Black and White and Rainbows

**Author's Note:**

> Dear God please don't hate me I just wanted to do a rewrite of a one shot that I wrote two years ago and I wanted to do it starring a couple of my favorite Haikyuu characters. I knew exactly where this was going but I still broke my own heart :)

Everyday was the same for Tsukishima; wake up, get ready for work, and work from 9 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon. And after that, run some errands if he had the time, watch whatever was on TV while he ate his dinner, and then go to bed. It was all as uneventful as one would wish to avoid. And to make matters worse, it was all in black and white.

Rising like every other morning, Tsukishima found that today it was much more difficult to pull himself out of bed. He rose painstakingly slow. All the while he thought ‘I’m glad I’m not a TV character or else my audience would throw their remote at the screen.’ That was one of the more amusing thoughts that Tsukishima could produce at random and it was enough for him to give an airy chuckle at his own joke.

Moving past what he thought of as an incredibly clever amusement, Tsukishima willed his eyes to open despite his body’s violent protests. The weight of his eyelids were comparative to lead and they were almost impossible to lift. Dragging the palms of his hands down his face, Tsukishima fought his eyes’ insistence to remain closed. He lumbered towards his kitchen, collecting himself, praying to some higher power that today he didn’t have to.

Every morning, Tsukishima wished that he didn’t have to open his eyes. Every morning he wished harder than the last. The varying shades of black and white and grey did nothing but tease him relentlessly. Most people started seeing color while still in school. Because, more often that not, kids met their soulmate for the first time while still in school. But since so many kids started seeing color at around the same time, they couldn’t figure out until they were much older who their soulmate was going to be.

Most people, especially when they’re children, don’t even realize that they’ve started seeing color until they pick up an apple and realize that it’s not grey anymore. Then they glance at their surroundings and realize that the sky is blue and trees and grass are green. It’s a surreal moment, Tsukishima was sure, but he could never see that happening to him. He had heard friends and family talk about how they discovered that they could finally see color but the older he got, the more he hated hearing those stories.

So, for every person that exists on this planet, there is a matching half somewhere else in the world? Yes and no. Sometimes people will go their entire life never having met their soulmate, never knowing if they actually had one. Then there are others, typically the worst of humans, who the universe decided truly do not deserve soulmates. And if you died not seeing color, no one would really know which one you were.

Snapping himself out of his thoughts, Tsukishima grabbed a fresh looking grey apple. But when the fruit always looks grey, it’s hard to tell if it’s actually fresh. And more often than not, the apple he would pick up for breakfast was either bitter or soft, neither being particularly pleasant. Tsukishima took a brave bite of the apple that he held and found that it was, in fact, soft. _Figures_ , he thought.

After forcing himself to take a couple more bites, Tsukishima threw the apple in trash, thinking that it was better to toss it than to waste his time choking it down. In order to avoid being late, Tsukishima rushed back to his room to get washed up and dressed for work and while he wasn’t a stranger to disappointment, Tsukishima felt like he needed to brace himself for the worst that he could encounter that day.

<><><>

At the ripe age of twenty-three, Tsukishima’s life has been nothing but consumed by lack of color. He had never seen a speck of color in his life. Not even a flash, a glitch in the system, that would betray the idea that there was a world outside of black and white. All Tsukishima could do was take others’ word for it. And as time passed, it started feeling less and less like enough.

Love, he believed, was hard to come by. And your soulmate, even harder despite what everyone around him seemed to say. The key to seeing color was a little less love and a little more luck. You couldn’t purposefully find your soulmate, you just had to be lucky enough to run into them at some point in your life.

But once that happens, life becomes a little more difficult. After you meet your soulmate, you start to see color but if you can’t figure out who you met when you stopped seeing the world in black and white, well, then, you were just one of the unlucky ones.

When you meet your soulmate, not only do you start seeing color, but you learn their name too. Not because they tell you, but because the universe decides it’s time for you to know. And that does help with finding your soulmate. Especially if the name is unique or you live in a small town. Otherwise, though, it was still quite difficult.

Thousands of people around the world spend their lives trying to find the person the universe gave them. And their one goal is not being to spend the rest of their lives with someone who was very literally made for them but rather to see the world in all its glory; in color.

All his life Tsukishima thought that love was the key to seeing color. That love was the tunnel to a new world, a new perspective. But like many other things, he was wrong about this too. The only thing that mattered was luck. And he wasn’t a lucky person.

Getting lost in his thoughts again, Tsukishima was splashed back to reality by dirty street water when a car that had passed by drove a little too close to the curb. His suit was half soaked just as he was coming up to the office building where he worked. Looking down at his watch and groaning audibly, Tsukishima knew he had no time to go back to his apartment and change. He lived close enough to walk to work but far enough away that he couldn’t walk back to put on a dry suit and be on time to work. But what was one mishap in the grand scheme of things? At least he knew he wasn’t going to see anyone he knew while at work.

<><><>

Seated at the receptionist’s desk on the ground floor of a multi-million dollar company, Tsukishima plastered a fake smile onto his face. He hated fake smiling but everyday when he sat down at the desk, he remembered his rough first few weeks working for the company. 

Tsukishima didn’t exactly have a friendly face. Despite having friendly features - golden brown eyes, fluffy blond hair, so he had been told, he couldn’t really tell- Tsukishima had never seemed like an approachable type, which was rough considering that he worked as a receptionist.

When he had first started working here, people had been afraid to approach him, causing several people visiting the company to be late to meetings and blaming it on the “scary blond boy at the front desk.” Tsukishima had never seen the higher-ups so upset. And since he never wanted to interact with them like that again, he practiced smiling at home.

And he figured out how to smile in a way that appeared friendly but wasn’t too strenuous for him. But that smile, that smile that Tsukishima wore everyday, never spread to his eyes. But thanks to his glasses it was hard for people to tell at first glance. But he knew. He would always know.

Whenever Tsukishima thought about that, he always wondered why his smile would ever reach his eyes anyway. There was never any reason for it to. Only true, heartfelt, genuine smiles reached a person’s eyes. But that was never the case for Tsukishima. He can’t remember a time he would’ve ever smiled like that.

That was, until _he_ showed up. He wasn’t what most would call an extraordinary-looking person but, good god, to Tsukishima he was everything. His mousy brown hair, and warm brown eyes, and soft-looking face held a proud confidence. He wasn’t smiling but Tsukishima could see from the wrinkles around his eyes that he smiled often and was really truly happy when he did.

His face may have beamed confidence but Tsukishima could tell he was nervous. About what, though, he didn’t know.

Tsukishima could see this beautiful stranger wringing his hands together as he moved closer to his desk. And the closer he got the more Tsukishima could start to figure out his name. People have said that once they met their soulmate, they suddenly knew their name. But he couldn’t get ahead of himself. This could just be a fluke. There was no chance that he could be soulmates with someone like that.

Next thing he knew, the stranger was standing in front of him, brown eyes warm and wide. It was then that Tsukishima figured out his name; _Yamaguchi Tadashi_. 

“I like your name, Tsukishima Kei,” Yamaguchi said under his breath. He had his arms crossed in front of his chest and rested them on the tall reception desk so that his face was mere inches away from Tsukishima’s own.

They remained there for a few seconds before Yamaguchi whispered something to Tsukishima again, this time with his smile spreading farther across his face. “Can you see the colors too?”

Tsukishima had been so mesmerized by Yamaguchi’s face that he didn’t realize that he knew that Yamaguchi’s hair and eyes were brown when he first walked into the building. He began looking around the lobby and saw that the fake potted plants that were scattered around were green and their pots an array of blue, red, and orange.

He didn’t know how he even knew the names of the colors but that didn’t really matter. Not right now. What mattered was that Tsukishima had finally found the person that was made for him. And he knew it as soon as Yamaguchi had walked into the building.

Tsukishima brought his attention back to the man in front of him and nodded. A smile making it’s home on his face. One that spread to his eyes. 

Yamaguchi broke eye contact first, grabbing a sticky note off of Tsukishima’s desk, and scribbling something on it. When he was done and looked back at Tsukishima, he said one final thing before he left. “This is my phone number. I’m heading to a meeting and I don’t know when it’ll end or when your shift ends. So shoot me a text or give me a call whenever you can. See you soon, Tsukki.” And with that Yamaguchi was gone.

<><><>

Tsukishima had been seeing Yamaguchi for over eight months now. And everything was going perfectly. Yamaguchi was coming over to Tsukishima’s apartment to celebrate their both getting promotions at their respective jobs.

Tsukishima had one of Yamaguchi’s favorite records playing, which soon became one of his favorites too, as he was setting out the food and bottles of wine and champagne. 

Tsukishima’s phone gave a little _ding_ signaling that he received a text. He couldn’t help but smile when he saw it was a text from Yamaguchi.

**Yama ❤️:** hey tsukki! i’m sorry but i’m going to be running late! work stuff, ya know? haha but i should be home soon!!

**Tsukki:** alright, and there’s no need to rush, we’ll see each other soon

**Yama ❤️:** okay :) i love you <3

**Tsukki:** i love you too <3

Once Tsukishima was done setting up he grabbed his phone and started playing games to pass the time but it only succeeded in making him drowsy. So soon, he ended up falling asleep. 

When he woke up from his nap, Tsukishima checked the time on his phone. _It’s seven p.m already, where’s Yama and why hasn’t he texted or called?_ Tsukishima wondered to himself.

He set his phone back down on the sofa and went to the window to see if maybe Yamaguchi’s car was outside or coming down the street but there was nothing there.

The street outside Tsukishima’s apartment was eerily quiet except for an ambulance that drove by with its lights and sirens on. He paid it no mind and went back to his phone, thinking that he should probably call Yamaguchi.

And he did call him. Several times. And each time his call rang long enough to be sent to voicemail. Tsukishima began getting worried. This was incredibly unlike Yamaguchi.

Tsukishima’s ears perked up when he heard a car pull into one of the apartment parking spaces but when he peeked out the window, he saw one of his neighbor’s cars. 

It was then, when Tsukishima looked out the window that he noticed he was seeing everything in black and white again. The blood drained from his face as he fell to his knees. He covered his mouth to stifle the sobs but it was no use. He couldn’t stop himself from crying

Because it was then he knew that Yamaguchi wasn’t going to come tonight. Or any night after that.

**Author's Note:**

> UHHHHHH I'M SORRY??????? HHHHHHHHH IT HURTS ME MORE THAN IT HURTS YOU I PROMISE
> 
> Wanna know what I was listening to? Basically just ChilledCow's Lo-Fi playlist it's a really great playlist to listen to when you really wanna focus on writing also x Ana x by Badflower and Critical Beauty by Pentagon. Not necessarily romantic songs but still bops


End file.
